by Wil McCarthy
“See? Humans,” Nortlan said as they approached.
“Hmm. Well, perhaps they’ve seen the trolls.” Argur mused, making a flourish in the air to emphasize the point.
Like Nog La, this valley really only had two exits. However, that assumed you were going to stay within the bounds of the valley and the pass. The hills surrounding this High Vale were low and smooth; if the trolls decided to cross them—if they lived back there somewhere, or if they were trying to throw off pursuit—then there wouldn’t be much to stop them.
“Who goes?” a high voice demanded from inside the village. They didn’t have a gate, but they did have an opening in the fort sticks, with a single boy guarding it.
Annoyed, Argur called out, “Who do you think, boy? We’re the Knights of Ell, from Nog La.”
“The what of what?” the boy demanded in the same tone.
“What do you want?” Another voice called out, from a nearby hilltop outside the village. A woman this time, holding a little cabbage in each hand. She sounded, if anything, more suspicious than the boy.
“We’re not staying,” Argur assured them both. “We’re in pursuit.”
“Of what?” asked a third voice. This time a man, again from inside the village.
“Our daughters, nabbed by trolls.”
“Oh,” said the man. “That’s the best. That’s the best. You’re going to get us all killed.”
“Take me to your headman,” Argur said impatiently. “Or bring him to us.”
“He’s hunting.”
“Of course he is,” muttered Jek.
Argur paused for a moment, wiped his mouth with his hand, and said, “Look, one of you is going to tell me which way those trolls went, or there’s going to be trouble.”
A growing crowd of villagers—both inside and outside the fort sticks—glared at the knights, but what could they say? What could they do? If they threw a rock or a spear, if they slung a hardmud bullet or leverthrew a dart, the knights would probably block it with a shield, or absorb the impact with their armor. And even if they didn’t—even if one of them got injured—what happened next would be ugly and one-sided.
“They take our girls, too,” someone finally said.
Someone else scoffed at that. “We give them girls.”
Argur was brought up short by that. What did that mean? Why would anyone give human girls to a monster?
“To keep the peace,” someone answered for him.
For a moment, nobody said anything. And then, suddenly, everyone was speaking at once.
“How could you do such a—”
“We have to keep our end of the—”
“They’ll kill you, then our girls, and then—”
“Which way did they mudding go, you muddy mud—”
And then, a single voice piercing through: Nortlan’s. “Heeey! Close your lips, close your lips, close your lips!”
That managed, somehow, to create a moment of general silence, so Nortlan followed with: “How many girls have you given up?”
“Two,” someone answered after a pause.
“When?”
“Last year, and the year before.”
“Last year and the year before? And what about this year? What about next year? How many more are they going to ask for? How many can you lose?”
Again, silence.
Argur was impressed. Nortlan had always seemed a rather feckless boy, not good at anything and not particularly interested in being good at anything. But most people were afraid to speak to strangers. Mud, some people were afraid to speak to neighbors and friends. But here young Nortlan had commanded the attention of an entire village, plus the Knights of Ell! Clearly, Nismu’s blessing had given him courage. Argur was tempted to step in and take over from here, but with some effort he shut his lips and let the boy speak. He wanted to see how this worked out.
“I know you’re afraid,” Nortlan said in his squeaking voice, raising his oversized shield, causing his oversized armor to rattle around him. “I’m afraid. These trolls are frightening creatures, and they seem to have other frightening creatures at their command. They attacked Nog La! In the daylight! With a boolis! But nobody is asking you to fight them.”
Again, silence.
“That’s what we’re here for,” Nortlan said, now slapping a hand against his shield. And then against Tom’s shield, and Argur’s, and Jek’s. “You see? You see? These men are the Knights of Ell, and they’ve been fighting monsters since, well, since the world was young. Just lift your arm and point. One of you, all of you, it doesn’t matter. Just point to where the trolls live. Which direction do they come from? Which direction do they return to? Just point. Just point.”
After all that fuss, Argur was disappointed when the people simply pointed up the trail, toward the other end of their little valley, where Argur and his men were going to look anyway. The Knights all chuckled nervously at that.
“The next valley,” someone said.
“They moved in last year,” someone else said.
“Nobody was living there. Too many monsters!”
And then a voice from the village said, “We sent them to you. They came to us again, and we told them there were more girls, and better girls, across the mountains in Nog La. If you attack them, O Knights of Blah Blah, be sure you kill them all. Because they will blame us for this, and we’re the ones who have to live here. Not you.”
Argur was tempted to murder whoever had spoken. In fact, he was tempted to murder all of these people. Had they really done that? Sent the trolls to Nog La, to save their own mudding daughters? But murder was worse than treachery. Murder would poison the whole valley of Nog La, turning spirits and human beings against one another.
So he was even more tempted to just turn and go, to leave these people to their own fate. They filled him with such rage and disgust that he honestly hoped they all would die. Killed by trolls or whatever. But instead he instead took a breath and told them, “If there were men here, they would form a Knighthood of their own. If there were women here, they would demand it. I see nothing but children. This boy”—he pointed at Nortlan—“is braver than all ten of you put together. Think about that. He’s off to fight monsters in your name, while you, what, grub for cabbages in the dirt? Enough. Now hear me: you will give nothing more to okor. These lands are under our protection, and under our laws. Anyone who violates this will—” he paused to think of a threat, and finally settled on: “—answer to us.”
“You also smell bad,” Jek added.
* * *
The rest of the day was filled with frustration. They were told that the next valley over—the highest of the High Vales—was a full day’s march away, and they had lost time arguing with the villagers. Not much time, perhaps, but any time was too much. The trolls were faster than they should be, with their short, thick legs. Again, there seemed to be some desperate need goading them along, driving them to work harder, and to do things no troll had ever done before.
Well, Argur and Timlin had a desperate need of their own, and so did all the other Knights who had daughters, or who were not yet married, or who had sons who were not yet married. Even a community as large as Nog La could not lose people without the loss being felt, one way or another, by everyone.
And so they marched across the valley and into the pass, which had no name that Argur had ever heard. Wary of ambushes, the men watched every direction at once, and listened intently for sounds like snapping twigs or birds suddenly changing their tune. But it seemed the trolls were not interested in attacking them here, and were still far enough ahead that all their immediate signs had died down. They did, of course, leave a visible trail—not just trodden earth but also turds and urine stains, the freshly gnawed bones of rabbits and goats and such. There were no bloodstains or entrails, though, which meant the trolls were subsisting on carried provisions. And that by itself was significant, because it meant (again) that they didn’t want to be slowed down by hunting game along the way, a
nd it meant that their simple carrying bags—made from partially cured animal hide with the fur still on it—must have been carrying a lot of food when they left their valley. Argur had always been told a troll required about twice as much food as a human, so to have enough to travel for four days must have been…well, a lot.
The day was also frustrating because the men were constantly tired. It seemed difficult to catch their breath, somehow. At first Argur thought he was imagining it, and then he thought it was just his own problem, but soon everyone was complaining.
“Perhaps it’s magic placed upon us by the villagers,” Jek guessed.
“Or by the trolls?” Nortlan said, a bit worriedly.
And that gave Argur pause. There were a handful of wizards in Nog La, like Nismu of Sunrise Castle, who could call upon the spirit world to accomplish strange things. Nismu could call birds with a block of wood and a stick, and heal sour wounds with maggots and mud. Maggots and mud! Other wizards could tell the sex of an unborn baby, or predict the arrival of a storm or an early winter. In Argur’s childhood, a wizard had even been banished for placing a curse on a woman who’d spurned him. He claimed innocence, but she grew ill immediately after their argument, and died soon after. Argur had never doubted these wizards’ magic was real, but there was a smallness to it—a quality immediate to their person. The banished wizard, Moget, was perhaps the most powerful Nog La had ever seen, but even he had had to touch Akka before she grew ill. He could summon birds, but could not command them. He could predict storms, but could not direct the lightning. Argur had never heard of a wizard who could tire out a group of strong men from across an entire valley.
Did trolls possess a stronger magic? They had somehow controlled a boolis, after all. They had somehow attacked in daylight, and carried away three girls and enough food to sustain them on the journey home. They were walking faster than they should be able to.
“Trolls are too stupid,” Tom said.
“Perhaps,” Argur said uncertainly. “They’ve always struck me as magical in some way, but it doesn’t matter. Have they struck us down with lightning? No? This spirits of this valley are angry, that’s all. These people are mud; what spirits would want to watch over them? Their ancestors are ashamed. It has nothing to do with us. We will catch these trolls today.”
“And then what?” Nort asked.
It was actually the first time anyone had asked that question.
“And then we’ll see,” Argur answered, because what else could he say? That they would kill every troll? Certainly not because these idiot villagers demanded it. They would do whatever was necessary.
In fact, though, they didn’t catch the trolls. The curse of weariness was simply too powerful; it was hard for them to catch their breath, and their packs and belts and shields and armor seemed heavier somehow. The sun seemed unnaturally hot, and the shade of trees seemed unnaturally cold. They had to rest frequently, to drink water frequently, so that by the time they had crossed this little valley and climbed partway up into the pass beyond it, the sun was behind the mountains and the light had already begun to fail.
“We can’t fight them in the dark,” Argur said bitterly. “Even if we catch them, they’d have the advantage.”
“We should have brought Nismu with us,” Tom said.
“We shouldn’t have stopped for armor,” Jek said. “We could have caught them at the bridge.”
“Well, it’s done now,” Argur growled. “Let’s set up camp. Same as yesterday.”
This final indignity sat heavily in Argur’s gut. Were they not strong enough to save their own daughters? Not swift enough to catch a band of lumbering trolls? Had his own failings as a leader left them soft and vulnerable and incompetent? The trolls would keep right on marching in the twilight, and would get to their home, and start doing whatever it was they did with nabbed girls. It didn’t take much imagination to guess; their victims had all been close to puberty. Virgins, unlikely to be pregnant already, but easy to get pregnant in short order. It wasn’t clear to him why trolls would want to put a troll baby in a human belly, but it was no hard guess that they would attempt it soon, if they hadn’t already. As the sky turned dark and the stars came out and the Knights set up their camp, this idea brought Argur close to vomiting several times. And yet, still, with the curse of weariness upon him and hostile spirits all around, he slept.
2.6
They rose early again the next day, packed up their camp, and hurried over and down the pass, into the valley beyond it. This one was all grass and almost no trees. It seemed abundant with grain, which was odd, because as far as Argur knew, trolls didn’t eat grain. They did eat meat, though—lots and lots of meat—and this Highest Vale was populated by a brown smudge that Perry declared to be a herd of woolly rhinoceros. Very dangerous, but very far away. He also pointed out several white specks that he said, worriedly, were boolises.
“We’ll have to go way around those,” he said.
“No,” Argur told him. “That will cost us time.”
“Running into a boolis could cost us more than that,” Perry said. His tone was joking, but of course it was no laughing matter.
“Do you see where the trolls live?”
“No,” Perry said. Then: “Wait, there’s a little sinew of smoke. Oh, mud, they’re right down there. We’re almost right above them.”
He pointed. Down below on the sloping hillside, away from the path they were on and nearly hidden among pine trees, Argur could see patterns of red and yellow—a troll’s favorite colors. Squinting, he thought he could perhaps make out the forms of tents, and moving figures.
“Quiet your voices,” Argur instructed everyone.
“They wouldn’t live out there in the grass, exposed to the sun,” Jek murmured, as though this had been obvious all along.
“We need to get closer,” Argur said.
“Send someone,” Nortlan whispered. “If we all go in, they’ll see us.”
“Oh, they will see us today,” Argur agreed.
“No,” Nortlan said quietly. “We need a plan. We don’t know how many there are, or how they’re arranged. We don’t know where they’re keeping the girls, or if they’re tied up.”
“He’s right,” Tom said. “I’ll go.”
Thinking for a moment, Argur said, “No, Jek is quieter. Will you go look for us, Jek?”
“Why me?” Jek complained.
“Because you walk quietly,” Argur repeated. “And because you’re brave and strong.”
There wasn’t much Jek could say to that, so he undid his belt and started sliding his armor off.
“What are you doing?” Nortlan asked, now clearly worried his planning was going to get someone hurt.
“Can’t walk quietly in this,” Jek explained, with considerable irritation.
Argur said, “Jek, if they see you, run straight back here as fast as you can. We’ll form a half-circle and lead their fighters into a trap. You see, Nort? We do have a plan.”
“I don’t want them to see me,” Jek said, looking down at himself. At the tan leather of his cloak, and the gray-green linen of his tunic. None of it matched the ground, or the trunks of pine trees. His brown skin would be harder to see, and so he shrugged out of his clothing as well, stripping down to nothing but a loincloth and sandals. He immediately began to shiver, although whether it was fear or just the accursed air, Argur couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter; approaching a village of trolls in just a loincloth, who wouldn’t be afraid?
“Lucky for you I’m so brave,” Jek said to Argur, then grabbed a little knife and set off down the hill.
Eager to get things moving—to get his daughter away from beasts!—Argur said to the men, “Load darts, but keep a spear handy. It’s going to be close among these trees.”
“No!” Nortlan whispered.
“No?” Argur asked, annoyed and somewhat incredulous. Did the boy now fancy himself an expert in combat?
Nortlan had a hardmud ball—a sling bullet—whic
h he held up for Argur to see. “How about slings and clubs? Think about it: they didn’t kill anyone when they were nabbing the girls. They didn’t kill those villagers, either. Do we want to be the first to start poking holes?”
“I do,” Argur said. Then: “Anyway, a sling’s not reliable in woods like this. The bullet can hit a twig, or the sling itself can, and then your whole throw is off.”
“But a lot of bullets,” Nort insisted, “will hurt them, get their attention, even if they’re not all on target. We’ll let them know what they’re up against, without starting a war.”
* * *
The word he used was borkhuni, which meant something like “big fight.” It wasn’t clear to Harv how this implied something different than a mere battle or skirmish, and yet the boy’s meaning was clear: turning all of the trolls against all of the humans, everywhere. It also wasn’t clear how he thought the news might spread to other trolls, if all the ones here were simply slaughtered. And yet…
The creature back at the bridge had been very clearly a Neandertal. It had the heavy bone structure, the sloping brow, the thick jaw and broad nose with which Neandertals were always depicted in Harv’s time. And dressed in furs! Finally, something like a real cave man! And that had pushed back Harv’s estimate of the time here, to 30,000 or 40,000 BC. When had the Neandertals gone extinct?
He knew that modern humans of the Cro-Magnon type—Argur’s people—had coexisted alongside ancient humans of the Neandertal type for thousands of years, and that did imply some sort of peace between them. Perhaps an uneasy peace, punctuated by violence as the Neandertals slowly went extinct, but certainly not an all-out war.
So perhaps Nortlan’s concern was well founded; perhaps the humans—technologically superior but physically weaker—knew not to inflame their neighbors too greatly or too abruptly. Even the Knights of Ell had apparently taken generations—centuries, even—to wrest the valley of Nog La away from them. And still had not fully pushed them out!
